


Original Sin

by lafiametta, onstraysod



Category: The Musketeers (2014), The Terror (TV 2018), Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Angry Sex, Biting, Blood Kink, Choking, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, Finger Sucking, Hand Jobs, Knifeplay, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Power Dynamics, Pretty much everything here folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:08:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23828104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lafiametta/pseuds/lafiametta, https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/pseuds/onstraysod
Summary: The Frenchman had managed to capture his attention from the moment he had been brought before Arthur, arrogant even after being forced onto his knees, and even though he embodied all that Arthur despised - a mercenary heart fueled by cruelty and immorality- Arthur could not deny that he was drawn to Grimaud, compelled by dark, forbidden desires within himself that he did not understand.A Joplittle AU featuring Liam Garrigan's King Arthur (fromTransformers: The Last Knight) and Matthew McNulty's Lucien Grimaud (fromThe Musketeers)
Relationships: King Arthur (Transformers)/Lucien Grimaud
Comments: 19
Kudos: 36





	Original Sin

**Author's Note:**

> i. This fic is a continuation of a concept lafiametta introduced in Ch. 14 of [_All the waves of our heart_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17654753/chapters/54653698#workskin), in which Grimaud appears at the camp of Arthur's war band and volunteers to fight for the king. Reading that piece (and its [follow-up](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23074741/chapters/55196947)) is not necessary to understand this story (but highly recommended by onstraysod!).
> 
> ii. The ship name is Grimarthur (all kudos to the person who came up with that)

The day’s battle had been victorious—the Saxon army of the north lay decimated, and Arthur and his knights ready to push onward and take on the remainder that lay beyond Eboracum. 

That night, all were in high spirits, flushed with their triumph—and with the caskets of Saxon mead they had taken as their spoils—and Arthur’s tent the scene of their revelry, lasting long into the night. Every brazier burned bright with fire, and no goblet was left empty for long. There was no bard to sing for them, not on the rough travels of a long campaign, and so they made do with Sir Gawain, whose voice was still clear and pure as a summer’s day, even if the knight himself seemed unable—in his present state—to remember most of the words. 

At the center of it all, Arthur held court, admiring his brave and worthy knights, raising his cup to them and drinking his fill more times than he could count. They had earned this celebration, each and every one of them, and he wanted nothing more than to honor their courage and loyalty by granting them such a reward. 

Before long, the hour grew late, each knight eventually taking leave of the king and stumbling off towards his own tent where, undoubtedly, he would greet the coming dawn in an altogether unenviable condition. After the last of them departed, Arthur rose unsteadily from his chair, still feeling the effects of the mead—only to see that a final man remained, a solitary figure clad in black, who sat across from one of the braziers, gazing silently into its depths. 

Lucien Grimaud. 

“Do you ever tire of hearing your praises sung?” 

Arthur laughed. “Surely today’s victory was great enough to please even you, Grimaud. Or if not the victory, at least the slaughter.” He watched one corner of the Frenchman’s mouth twitch up. “Those songs were not just for me. They were for all the men.”

“I heard your name enough.”

Arthur walked closer, his steps uncertain. “And so long as you fight in this land, with these men, you will hear it yet more. Tell me: if you despise me so, why are you here? If not to fight for me, or for the Britons, then what? Did Saxons kill someone you loved?” He paused, head tilted curiously to one side as he studied the Frenchman. “I confess, I find it difficult to imagine you capable of such an emotion.”

Grimaud turned his dark eyes upon the king, his smirk akin to a snarl. “I’m sorry I don’t live up to the noble standards of your warband. _Sire_ ,” he added, his tone mocking.

“You speak, but you do not answer.” Arthur shook his head in disapproval. “For a man so merciless in battle, I’m surprised to see you cower before a single question.” 

He was close enough now to feel the heat of the brazier against his cheeks, close enough to notice the half-empty flagon in Grimaud’s hand and the strangely wide set of his gaze, no doubt loosened by drink. How many times had his cup been filled that night? Enough to knock down a wall or two of the dark and impregnable fortress the Frenchman had built inside himself?

“Come now, answer me,” Arthur said, as he came to a stop just before Grimaud’s open knees. The Frenchman’s eyes had settled on a point near the center of Arthur’s chest, not even bothering with the courtesy of looking at him directly. Arthur breathed in, suddenly filled with the inexplicable compulsion to reach down and grab the Frenchman by the hair on the back of his head and wrench his gaze up to meet his own. Yet the still-sober part of him knew enough to resist, aided by the certainty that—king or no—Grimaud would have a dagger to his throat long before a second breath had left his body. 

“You could fight for anyone,” he added, “for the Saxons, even. God knows their savagery would suit you better. Why do you remain here with us, fighting by my side? Surely it is not for Gawain’s singing.” 

Slowly, Grimaud raised his eyes to meet Arthur’s gaze. “I heard the tales. That in the west of Britain there was a warlord of uncommon cunning and valor. A king of unmatched virtue: generous, merciful, untouched by the lusts of other rulers.” He smirked, raising his flagon to his lips for a drink before continuing, staring at Arthur above the curve of the vessel. When he’d swallowed his fill, he licked the mead from his lips. “I desired to know whether such a man could truly exist.”

Arthur spread his hands. “And? You have found the warlord of the tales, though he does not vouch for their accuracy. The ruler they describe is more god than man, and I am very much mortal: prey to the same faults as any other. Yet I do try to be just. But what say you? Judging by your behavior, I would guess that you’ve found me a disappointment.”

True, he was standing very near the brazier now, and the fire still burned hot. But Arthur was aware of a wave of oppressive, suffocating heat surging through him as Grimaud’s gaze tracked up his body, from the toes of his boots to the loose waves of his hair, a heat that seemed to have an internal source. He had imbibed too much, surely. Coupled with the exhilaration of the victory, the mead was no doubt responsible for this powerful sensation, and the strange uptick of his heartbeat as he waited for Grimaud’s response.

“You’ve exceeded all my expectations.” Leaning forward, resting his forearms on his knees, Grimaud watched surprise wash across Arthur’s face, and seemed amused by it. “And that, you see, is the problem.”

“The problem?”

“No man is truly virtuous. If one seems to be, it is only ever pretense. And the more perfect the pretense, the more corrupt the real man underneath.” 

“Ah, so that is your true purpose here, is it?” The flood of inner heat that had seemed pleasurable, if bewildering, to Arthur before now took its true form: fury, coiling around his spine, rushing to his fingers and curling them into fists that itched to grasp a hilt or, crude as it was, crash into flesh and splinter bone. “It has nothing to do with honor, nothing to do with defending a land and its people. I was right to wonder if you could love, and now I have my answer. You are capable of nothing but destruction.”

“Destruction can serve a vital purpose.” Grimaud’s voice was smooth as silk, winding its way through the frenzy of Arthur’s thoughts. “It strips away all pretense and lays us bare. Holds up a mirror to help us see what we truly are.” 

“And you wish to be that mirror, do you?” Arthur barked, as he turned on his heel and began to pace the few steps before him, wanting some outlet for his anger before he did something he might later regret. 

It was clear to him now, even in his muddled state, that he should send the Frenchman away—for good, if it came to that—and be done with his endless provocations. Perhaps it was a test, or some divine retribution: for there seemed to be no other man on earth as perfectly designed to raise Arthur’s blood as Lucien Grimaud. 

“No,” came the reply. Somehow, without Arthur being fully aware, Grimaud had risen from his seat, and now stood to block Arthur’s path. “I cannot show you what you do not want to see.”

“And what is that?” Arthur seethed, flickers of rage kindling in him once more. “That I am a monster? A tyrant? A hypocrite of the worst kind—”

“A sinner.”

Arthur stilled, his body run through by an invisible chill. 

The Frenchman stood just an arm’s length away, close enough that Arthur could smell the day’s sweat on his leather jerkin, close enough that he could see the heated flush of his cheeks, no doubt the result of sitting so long by the fire. His dark eyes bore into Arthur, scrutinizing him, _searching_ him, as if hunting for those secret offenses that would prove his verdict true. But Arthur had nothing to hide: he was not a perfect man, but he had done his best to honor his vows, to maintain his faith—even when all else seemed lost—and to prove loyal to his people and to the men who fought in his name. Even his minor transgressions were shared with his confessor, dutifully enumerated one by one and repented for in turn. 

And yet— 

There was something else, something never uttered to his confessor, something that Arthur himself could barely begin to acknowledge. What could anyone understand of the language of dreams, after all, especially when those dreams arrived half-formed, full of strange images and unfamiliar sensations? _A pair of soft and inviting lips set within a cruel mouth… foreign words whispered against his ear, warm and melodic… strong hands tracing the lines of his body, gentle first and then rough as they urge him onward…_ He shook it all from his mind; such conjured fancies, he knew, came unbidden from a realm beyond the world of men. As such, there could be no sin, no matter what the Frenchman might suppose.

Arthur pressed his mouth into an unforgiving line, hardening his gaze as he turned it once more outward. 

“You forget yourself, Grimaud,” he said, the words of warning edged with iron—cold and merciless. 

The leering smirk that the Frenchman gave him in response would have been enough of a provocation to put a lesser man’s hand upon the hilt of his sword. But Arthur was better than that, and as if to prove it to himself, he drew a deep breath and turned his back on Grimaud.

“So you would walk away from a liegeman who offers you insult?” The sneer in Grimaud’s voice was clear. “That may be virtuous, but it is also weak.”

There was a point for even the noblest of men: a point beyond which tolerance could not venture. Arthur reached it in that moment, rage spreading a blood-red mist across his field of vision. He drew Excalibur from its scabbard as he turned, the blade ringing like a bell struck on a frosty morning: sharp, clear, and purifying. 

“Never before have I been forced to put to death one of my own men,” Arthur said, the crackle of the fire in the brazier now louder than the menacing softness of his tone. “Never have I contemplated such a deed, nor that a man’s insolence towards me might warrant it. But you, Grimaud… You drip poison from your tongue, and I will no longer suffer to hear it.”

Grimaud drew his own sword, holding it out before him in a blocking position, but his grip was loose and his stance easy. “Are you sure you’re in a fit state for this, my lord? The mead has made your steps unsteady.”

“You will see how fit I am when the last of your black blood is puddled on the ground.” Arthur lunged forward, swinging Excalibur into an upward arc that crashed down against Lucien’s blade. Snarling through bared teeth, the Frenchman shoved Arthur back and their swords crossed again as both men brought them down low, sharp edges of steel screaming as they slid together and skittered away. Arthur twisted around, coming at Grimaud from a different angle, but his every slash was inexact and his feet seemed disinclined to obey him. And yet, though Grimaud blocked every thrust, he hung back, never pressing his advantage. _He thinks to wear me down_ , Arthur reasoned, and he knew that he had been goaded into a fight that, thanks to the mead, he could not win. But he had started it and so he would finish it, one way or another.

“Have you lost your nerve now, you villain?” Arthur hissed, circling around Grimaud until he had placed himself between the Frenchman and the heavy wooden table that his knights had occupied earlier in the evening. It was a dangerous position, but one offering the advantage of escape and height if his legs should deign to work as he commanded them. “You are very good at cutting with your words; why do you hesitate to do so with your blade?”

Grimaud parried lightly with his sword, flippant, disdainful motions that further stoked Arthur’s rage. “Has it not occurred to you that perhaps I don’t wish to?”

Even as the sound of the last word reached Arthur’s ears, Grimaud sprung. With one deft slip of his blade, he caught Excalibur’s crossguard and sent the sword spinning from Arthur’s grip. In the next second, the Frenchman had the front of Arthur’s tunic bunched tight in one fist, the edge of his sword pressed to the king’s throat.

The laugh that spilled, sudden and bitter, from Arthur’s lips surprised him: it wasn’t how he had expected to greet death when it came to fetch him. But death was surely here, its face a hair’s breadth away and grimly handsome, its dark eyes shining in the light of the brazier as it leaned close, breathing fast with its exertions. 

“So you are a liar as well,” Arthur murmured, his gaze oddly fixed on Grimaud’s lips and the slight sheen of sweat or saliva or mead that glazed them. “Closing in for the kill even as you deny that desire.”

“Desire?” Grimaud seemed to puzzle over the word. He shook his head slowly. “No, I have been honest about what I want.”

“Indeed?” Arthur forced himself to stare into the Frenchman’s eyes, wondering—and it occurred to him that it might be the last question he ever posed to himself—how he could find such beauty in the gaze of so evil a man. The lashes that rimmed them were black and long as a maid’s, and even standing there awaiting the thrust of the blade, Arthur had a strange desire to touch them. “If not my death,” he continued, forcing his thoughts back to this present, final moment, “then what?”

Grimaud’s sword arm moved and, to Arthur’s astonishment, he threw down his weapon. Still clutching the front of Arthur’s tunic, but without uttering another word, Grimaud abruptly sank to his knees.

It took Arthur some moments to understand what was happening. His initial reaction to Grimaud’s hands grasping the laces of his breeches was bewilderment, but when the Frenchman began pulling them loose, his breath panting hot against the soft leather, Arthur suddenly understood.

Despite the primal instinct urging him to remain, to let Grimaud continue to work those skilled and nimble fingers, Arthur took a step back in retreat—or at least he attempted to, only to meet the rough edge of the table he had thought to use as a strategic position only moments ago. With a snap of realization, he could see what he had been too addled to grasp before: where he was standing was no accident. The Frenchman had clearly sought to pin him here, employing the heavy oak board as part of his own strategy, a trap Arthur had stumbled blindly into. 

_Bastard_. 

A fresh wave of fury flooded through him, mixing with the heady sensation of molten heat that was pooling in his groin and coiling feverishly through each limb. It was impossible: _how could a man like Grimaud have such power over him?_ Everything he did—every word, every look, every gesture—seemed designed to slither under Arthur’s skin, to set him aflame, despite all of Arthur’s attempts to rise above it. In a desperate act of will, he reached down, his hands grasping into the shoulders of Grimaud’s leather jerkin, hoping to find the strength to finally wrench the Frenchman away.

Just at that moment, the last of the laces came free, and with a swift tug, Grimaud pulled open the front of Arthur’s breeches. Arthur gasped, first at the chill of being exposed to the cool nighttime air, and then, as the Frenchman took him in hand, at the enveloping warmth that just as quickly replaced it. His legs trembled and he fell back against the table, his fists still clutching at Grimaud’s jerkin even as all the fight had gone out of them. If this was a trap, it was one Arthur was choosing not to escape. 

The Frenchman’s touch was searing, firm yet with a surprising gentleness, and Arthur’s need grew even more evident under his ministrations. All of that paled, however, once Grimaud parted his lips and ran his tongue along Arthur’s length, pausing only for a breath at the end before drawing it into the singularly wicked heat of his mouth. Stars exploded behind Arthur’s eyes, and he knew he was lost, fallen far past the point from which he might ever find his way back. 

“Damn you, Grimaud—” he muttered, a moan half-caught in his throat. Letting free of the jerkin, his hands reached lower and began to squeeze forcefully along the Frenchman’s wiry shoulders—whether in retribution or encouragement, it was impossible to tell. 

A pair of obsidian-dark eyes turned up to look at him, continuing to hold his gaze even as hands and lips and tongue remained eagerly wrapped around Arthur’s prick—a more arousing sight would have been almost impossible to contemplate. 

Grimaud pulled off slowly, letting his tongue linger lewdly to the very tip. “Go on,” he rasped, holding Arthur’s gaze. “I know what you want to do, so do it. Use me.” 

Arthur watched as Grimaud claimed his ruddy, swollen length again, his knees nearly buckling at the obscenity of the sight. Heat rolled over him in successive, pulsing waves; blood thundered so loudly in his ears he wouldn’t have heard a Saxon army if it were descending en masse upon the encampment. Grimaud worked his tongue in tandem with the thumb of the hand gripping the base of Arthur’s prick, rubbing the underside with both and groaning deep in his chest, a sound that ricocheted along Arthur’s every nerve. Whimpering, Arthur reached up and buried the fingers of both hands in Grimaud’s dark, sweat-tousled hair, pulling the Frenchman’s head back before dragging it forward along his shaft, forcing his prick deeper and deeper into the other man’s throat. The sound Grimaud made was not one of protest: it was a hum of satisfaction, and he sucked greedily as Arthur forced his head back and forth. His whole body shaking with the searing, sinful ecstasy, Arthur began thrusting shallowly each time he pulled Grimaud forward, tears starting up in his eyes.

“God forgive me!” Grasping Grimaud’s head with both hands, Arthur’s hips jerked convulsively as release tore through him, his pleasure spending itself in rivers down the Frenchman’s throat. He had only the faintest awareness of Grimaud’s throat bobbing as he swallowed and swallowed, or the way the mercenary licked the seed from his lips once he’d pulled off.

Collapsing back against the hard oaken table, he let his eyes flutter shut, wanting only to catch his breath as the ragged pulse of his heart began to slow. The way the Frenchman had practiced upon him with his hands and tongue, the way he had allowed Arthur to make use of his mouth, like a vessel begging to be filled—it was both profound and profane, unlike anything Arthur had ever known, and it shook him to the core. 

When he opened his eyes again, Grimaud was still on the ground before him, sitting back with his weight on his heels, thighs spread just past the point of invitation. The Frenchman’s eyes were full of mirth, disappearing behind his cheeks as they rounded with a grin of predatory satisfaction, a smile wide and deep enough to display the sharp points of his teeth. And below, Arthur could see, an unmistakable bulge had formed at the front of Grimaud’s own breeches, straining against the dark leather. 

He laughed—a bitter, hollow sound—as he appraised Arthur, looking amused and yet unsurprised by what he saw. 

“You have something you wish to say?” Arthur growled, the last of the pleasure ebbing from his body. He could feel only shame now, intertwining with what remained of his fury—a sensation of pinpricks across his flesh. 

The Frenchman pursed his lips, dark brows raised into points. “There is nothing to say.” His gaze raked along the length of Arthur’s body, pausing momentarily at the sight of his uncovered prick. “And you already know, don’t you? I feel no need to state what should be obvious.” A free hand skimmed lightly up the front of his thigh and palmed the front of his breeches, cupping himself through the leather. He hissed and then began to groan, the muscles in his neck straining as he brazenly rubbed back and forth against his thickening length. 

A bolt of fresh desire shot through Arthur, blinding and immediate, followed just as suddenly by humiliation at his own weakness and then uncontrollable, incandescent rage. The Frenchman was the very devil, he could see that now—sent here to mock and torment him, to tempt him into betraying everything he held dear. And yet that did not stop him from lunging forward and with two hands pinning Grimaud to the ground, using the brunt of his weight to hold himself above the Frenchman as they met there, fully eye-to-eye.

“You think to debase me with your own wickedness, Grimaud?” Arthur spat, his fists tightly gathering the cloth at the neck of Grimaud’s jerkin and shaking him, just hard enough for the Frenchman’s head to knock back against the ground. “To mock me with it? To make a plaything of me? You have mistaken my mercy for lenience. I will not be toyed with by the likes of you!” Letting go of the jerkin, Arthur’s fingers closed instead around Grimaud’s throat. He leaned forward, holding the other man in place between his thighs, and pressed down against the curve of Grimaud’s windpipe. “You will learn now not to disrespect me.”

Grimaud’s dark eyes had widened as soon as Arthur’s fingers began to choke off his breath, and now he began to seek escape, pushing his body against Arthur’s, writhing beneath him. Gritting his teeth against a smile of satisfaction—for there was suddenly nothing he desired more than to see fear glisten in the mercenary’s eyes—Arthur tightened his grip, pushing back against Grimaud, spreading his own knees to press his lower body more firmly down upon the struggling man. Grimaud’s hips jerked up against him, and even as he squeezed his fingers harder, a strange heat took root in the pit of Arthur’s stomach.

Grimaud wasn’t afraid, he realized. Quite the contrary. Even as Arthur attempted to strangle him, the Frenchman was _rutting_ against his body, moving his clothed erection briskly against Arthur’s groin, the wideness of his eyes reflecting not a dying man’s terror but the excitement of intense arousal. The force of the realization shot straight to Arthur’s prick where it rubbed against Grimaud’s stomach, and Arthur nearly gasped as he felt it begin to stiffen, so impossibly soon after the warmth of Grimaud’s mouth. His grip on Grimaud’s throat slackened and the Frenchman grinned, a wolfish baring of his teeth.

“Don’t stop now, my liege,” he taunted, continuing to cant his hips, his hands braced on the backs of Arthur’s thighs. “You’ve brought me so very close…”

“Violence—is that what you desire? Is that what stirs your blood?” Arthur fought to seize hold of his fury, knowing full well that the battle was being lost to the basest urges of his body. “So be it, then.”

He reached down to Grimaud’s belt, grasping the dagger that hung there, unsheathing it with a deft flick of his wrist. Placing the point of the blade at the base of Grimaud’s throat, he sliced down through the ladder lacing of the Frenchman’s jerkin and undershirt, baring a chest well covered in dark hair. Tugging at the ties that fastened Grimaud’s breeches, Arthur severed these too, the leather tearing as he pulled them open. When Grimaud’s prick sprang free of its trappings, Arthur gripped it, his fingers closing around the hot flesh, stiff as a sword hilt, and his mouth watered wantonly at the contact.

The Frenchman rocked feverishly into his grip, rough and demanding, and it was all Arthur could do to hold on, to keep some semblance of control. Grimaud brought a hand up towards their faces—for a fearful moment, Arthur thought he might have hidden away another weapon and now sought to use it—and then turned his head and spit into his open palm. His dark eyes glinted, the light from distant flames circling in their depths. Reaching back down, his hand curled firmly around Arthur’s prick and with a practiced turn of the wrist began drawing the slickness along its length and around the head. Arthur moaned, his thighs trembling, the world reduced to waves of pure sensation as Grimaud brought him once more to hardness. It was extraordinary—he was no longer a young man, quick to arouse again after spending—and yet here, with the Frenchman shuddering underneath him, he felt a raw, prodigious hunger that seemed as if it might never be truly sated. 

Grimaud’s grip loosened a little—Arthur nearly cried out in protest, so intent was he on chasing his own pleasure—only to wrap around both of their pricks along with Arthur’s hand, holding them all together as he began to stroke. Seed was already leaking from Grimaud’s rigid prick, and he smeared it between them, hands slipping and tugging as they worked each other into a frenzied need.

“Yes, that’s it,” he breathed out, as their hips pressed closer, bodies rocking back and forth in a shared rhythm. “Don’t deny this is what you wanted—from the very beginning.”

Arthur opened his mouth, ready to refute each word, and yet he could not, not if he was truly honest with himself. The Frenchman had managed to capture his attention from the moment he had been brought before Arthur, arrogant even after being forced onto his knees, and even though he embodied all that Arthur despised—a mercenary heart fueled by cruelty and immorality—Arthur could not deny that he was drawn to Grimaud, compelled by dark, forbidden desires within himself that he did not understand. 

He glanced down, studying the shape of the man beneath him, letting his gaze trace along those thick, dark brows, down the slope of that handsomely-formed nose, noticing, to his surprise, the light array of freckles dotted across his cheeks. Grimaud’s lips, parted with his labored breath, were round and blood-red, full enough to be bitten—or kissed. 

His mind befogged by lust and contempt and a thousand other sensations he could not fully name, Arthur leaned closer, feeling the Frenchman’s breath hot upon his skin. He wondered if those lips would still taste of mead, intoxicating and honey sweet, or even of himself—a thought so obscene his whole body shuddered, jerking roughly in Grimaud’s grasp.

As if he knew the content of Arthur’s thoughts, Grimaud leaned up abruptly and claimed his mouth, forcing his tongue between Arthur’s lips, a sound not unlike a growl bubbling up in his throat. Echoing the sound instinctively, Arthur sucked on Grimaud’s tongue, his every sense filled with the Frenchman: his heat, his smell, the mingled taste of their bodies. Grimaud groaned loudly, throwing his head back as his spine stiffened and his prick throbbed in Arthur’s hand. The breath caught in Arthur’s throat as Grimaud spilled between them, hot seed soaking into the rich fabric of his tunic.

Panting as he watched a spasm of pleasure contort the Frenchman’s features, Arthur leaned up and unclasped the brooch fastening the fur mantle at his throat. Throwing the garment down beside Grimaud, he tugged both soiled tunic and undershirt over his head. Grimaud’s dark eyes glittered as his gaze raked over Arthur’s bare chest, and he let go of Arthur’s prick to reach around and push the breeches from the king’s hips, his fingers gliding over the fleshy curves of Arthur’s backside. Driven by a feverish need that seemed insatiable, Arthur pushed the severed halves of Grimaud’s jerkin wider apart, then bent his face down to Grimaud’s belly. He licked at the hair matted with Grimaud’s own seed, coating his tongue in the man’s essence before continuing up to capture a stiff pink nipple between his teeth. The Frenchman’s gasp shot straight to Arthur’s impossibly hard prick and he lowered his hips again, rutting against Grimaud’s thigh.

With a grunt of effort, Grimaud levered his weight against Arthur, rolling him over atop his discarded cloak. His mouth crashed into Arthur’s with bruising force, licking the taste of his own seed from Arthur’s lips as his hand strayed downward to resume its earlier rhythmic tugging. Arthur barely managed to bite back a wail, so intense was the immensity of his arousal; as it was, he could not stop himself from pushing up into Grimaud’s torturous grasp. Grimaud nuzzled his face against Arthur’s throat, breathing deeply of his scent, humming contentedly almost as a cat would purr when scratched.

“How eager you are,” the Frenchman murmured, as he bit lightly into tender flesh. “Like a stag—or a prize stallion, driven to frenzy by the merest scent of something ripe.” He laughed, and tilted his head back to appraise Arthur more brazenly, his dark eyes shining like mirrors in the firelight. “Fear not. I will give you what you so obviously desire, even if you are too much of a coward to ask for it.” 

Were he in his right mind, Arthur would never have allowed such an insult to go unchallenged. But his mind was gone, utterly obliterated, all rational thought swept aside and in its place only blinding, all-consuming, desperate need. 

Grimaud pulled back to sit up, knees on either side of Arthur’s hips. With a single tug, he fully divested Arthur of his breeches, followed quickly by the rest of his own clothing, including his ruined jerkin, which he threw casually to the ground. When he reached down to run his palms against the flat of Arthur’s bare chest, Arthur could feel the heat of him, a firebrand catching against his skin. His eyes were drawn down the length of Grimaud’s body, so pale and lithe, lines of wiry muscle meeting at hip and shoulder, with a dusting of dark hair across his chest and down the center of his belly. Arthur had seen how much damage that body could do—just that morning, he had watched from the corner of his eye as the mercenary nearly severed a man in half—and now he was giving himself over to those hands, entirely at their mercy. He shivered, his prick drawing even tighter in anticipation. 

The Frenchman raised himself onto his knees and lifted his hand up to his mouth, slipping three fingers past his lips. Arthur watched in silence, entirely confounded, even more so when Grimaud pulled them slickly out and reached around, his hand disappearing behind his back. It was only when his spine began to arch, lips parting as his upper arm shifted up and down along his side, that Arthur at last realized what he was seeing— _the Frenchman was readying himself to be filled_ —and his heart stuttered at the absolute depravity of such a thing. Before long, Grimaud’s prick, dark and flushed as it lay nestled in a bed of thick curls, began to grow half-hard against his thigh, without being touched at all. 

“ _Vous-etês un voyeur?_ ” the Frenchman groaned, sweat shimmering on his brow. “ _Je pense que oui..._ ”

Pulling his hand away and wiping it along his discarded jerkin, Grimaud settled himself above Arthur. Taking the king once more into his grasp—and Arthur moaning with the renewed contact—he shifted his hips, sinking lower and lower until they found themselves poised just at the edge of the precipice. 

In moments, it would be too late. The part of Arthur’s mind that was still rational, still lucid despite the fever tearing his body in two, urged him to throw the Frenchman off, to take up the dagger he’d used before and thrust it up beneath Grimaud’s ribs. To engage in an act of such intimacy with the mercenary—a lesser man, vain and cruel—to know the feel of his body _from the inside_ , would surely taint him in ways he could never wash clean.

But the greater part of Arthur’s mind and body was burning with an anticipation so intense, so sharp and so deliciously _wrong_ , it obliterated every possible consequence. The future had disappeared, blasted away by the enormity of this strange, immediate desire. Only the present moment existed, the one in which he throbbed in Grimaud’s hand, yearning for the encompassing heat of the Frenchman’s body.

Holding the king’s gaze, Grimaud arched back again and lowered himself onto the head of Arthur’s prick with a strangled groan. The sudden, hot constriction drove the breath from Arthur’s lungs in a ragged gasp, the pulsing pressure of his arousal doubling to a point not unlike pain. Unable to control himself, Arthur thrust his hips, pushing himself deeper inside the tight lushness of Grimaud’s body, and the Frenchman’s eyelids fluttered as he grunted a half-hearted protest. Half-hearted indeed, for Arthur watched as Grimaud’s lips curved upward in a predatory smile, all trace of discomfort fleeing from his expression, replaced by successive waves of bliss. He pushed himself further down until Arthur’s whole length was seated inside him, and Arthur cried out, rendered inarticulate by the sensation.

Arthur was no stranger to the delights of the flesh: as a younger man, on many a drunken night of carousing with his companions, he had often found himself between a pair of willing thighs, and in the years since had never failed in the fulfillment of his duties to his lady wife. But this—the feeling of perfect tightness, coiling hot along every breathless inch of him, and the dark, helpless desire it fed—it was unlike anything he had ever known. _No wonder the churchmen held it as the greatest of sins_ , he thought with sudden clarity. For in comparison with something that felt so divine, how could God possibly compete? 

Grimaud began to move upon him, rocking his hips just enough to shift the angle between their bodies, each shallow thrust ushering in a tidal pull of rhythmic pleasure. Arthur hissed, throwing his head back against the ground, and then reached out to run his palms along the Frenchman’s knees and the tops of his thighs. His only thought was to try to contain Grimaud, to keep him impossibly close, tethered tight to Arthur’s body, denying him any possibility of escape. 

The Frenchman, however, had other ideas. He quickly caught Arthur’s hands in his own and pinned them down on either side of the king, pitching himself forward so that more of his weight fell upon Arthur. 

Making a sharp sound of disapproval with his tongue, Grimaud shook his head, now only a few inches above Arthur’s. “ _Non, je commande_ ,” he said, only to add with an ill-concealed sneer, “ _mon roi_.”

His hips began to move with greater speed, thighs straining as he dragged himself back and forth along the length of Arthur’s prick, finding a rough, half-wild pace that set every inch of Arthur entirely aflame. With a wicked gleam he caught Arthur’s gaze, only to lean down and draw his tongue along the tip of a hardened nipple, and then, in one sudden movement, capture it between his teeth and suck forcefully. 

Arthur shuddered; the combination of pleasure and pain was beyond all reason, causing him to nearly spend inside the warm haven of Grimaud’s body. His fingers tightened into fists within the mercenary’s grip, holding fast to the connection formed between them. _If this was sin, then let him be a sinner_. He would stand condemned as one by Grimaud, and happily so, content to live and die within this devil’s paradise of their own making. 

Grimaud panted against his chest, his breath falling in rapid bursts of moist heat. Lifting his head, the Frenchman brought his mouth to hover just over Arthur’s, and the king pushed forward, licking at the inviting depths revealed between the lush pink lines of Grimaud’s open lips. But the mercenary drew back at the last moment, gazing down at him with bared teeth, a harsh laugh spilling out between his labored exhalations.

“ _Vous-aimez ça, non_?” Grimaud raised himself a little, letting go of Arthur’s wrists and bracing both his palms on the king’s chest. His hips continued their desperate pace, snapping back to drive Arthur’s prick relentlessly against the same place inside him, his expression alternating between arrogance and abandon with each thrust. “ _Vous le voulez. Vous me voulez…_ ”

Arthur tilted his head, looking down to where Grimaud’s prick rubbed against his stomach. The Frenchman was fully erect, the head of his manhood exposed, swollen and slick. Arthur’s mouth watered at the sight; his tongue felt too big for his mouth and he longed to use it, to lave the Frenchman’s prick from root to tip, to take it between his lips and suck on the engorged head until all the man’s haughtiness dissolved in the extremity of his pleasure.

The mercenary was well versed in witchcraft, surely, for when Arthur dragged his attention away from Grimaud’s prick, he saw the awareness of his wicked thoughts shining in the Frenchman’s eyes. Bringing one hand up, Grimaud gripped Arthur’s jaw tightly, forcing the king to hold his gaze before slipping the tips of two fingers inside Arthur’s mouth. To his shame, Arthur gave no resistance, suckling eagerly as the rhythm of Grimaud’s body moved his fingers against the surface of Arthur’s tongue.

“Look at you,” Grimaud gasped, returning to Arthur’s native language. His voice was hoarse, strained; the formation of every syllable seemed a chore. “A great king, maybe. But a filthy man.”

The Frenchman’s words thundered in Arthur’s ears, igniting a powerful mixture of anger and lust that surged hot through his veins. He bit down hard, the sharp edge of teeth meeting flesh, and Grimaud jerked back, quickly extracting his fingers from between Arthur’s lips. The taste of iron, warm and metallic, blossomed red against Arthur’s tongue. He swallowed, purposefully letting it coat the rest of his mouth. 

Grimaud simply stared at him—an expression of genuine shock passing over those handsome features—and then glanced down at his hand, at the thin stream of blood welling from the second joints of his fingers. His mouth snarled, twisting into something almost monstrous, and then he began to laugh, a dark, self-satisfied sound. 

“Like a savage beast,” he murmured, as he brushed his stained fingers across Arthur’s lips and chin, and then down the center of his chest, a smear of crimson that Arthur could feel as a burning brand against his skin, claiming him as part of this unholy rite. Were they bound together now—his soul with the Frenchman’s—conjoined by means of such shared depravity? A day, or even an hour ago, every fiber of Arthur’s being would have resisted such a thought. And yet, at this moment, with Grimaud squeezing against his ribs and riding with even greater vigor upon his aching prick, it seemed no mere fancy—and even, perhaps, an inevitability. 

Giving rein to the urgent demands of his body, Arthur gripped tight against Grimaud’s forearms and began to thrust upwards with his hips, plunging into those inviting depths with a pace to match the other man’s increasingly unbridled rhythm. Still, it was not enough. He wanted— _he needed_ —more. Arthur was suddenly hungry, ravenous for the Frenchman’s body and each drop of ungodly pleasure that could be drained from it. In one swift motion, he dragged himself up into a seat with Grimaud positioned firmly in his lap and then claimed the mercenary’s mouth with his own, both tongue and prick taking possessive entry all at once.

Grimaud growled as he returned the kiss, if so savage an act could be called by such a name. He bit into the flesh of Arthur’s bottom lip and fresh blood bloomed upon the king’s tongue, the familiar salty tang of his own this time. The Frenchman thrust his hand into Arthur’s hair, winding it about his fingers in a painfully tight grip as he changed the angle of the kiss, licking deep as if to reach and taste some as-yet hidden place inside him. Pulling back, Arthur looked into Grimaud’s eyes, their dark depths glossy with a ferocity of desire more like a force of nature than an emotion: anger, disdain, admiration, and passion, all mixed together in a witch’s cauldron, a draft of poison that somehow, in that fiery moment, seemed an elixir of life. Holding the Frenchman’s gaze, Arthur stroked his palms along the mercenary’s tensed, trembling thighs before working one hand in between their sweat-slick bodies. He watched Grimaud’s focus go momentarily slack as his thumb worked around the engorged head, sliding along the leaking slit.

Bringing his hand up to the Frenchman’s mouth, Arthur smeared the seed coating his thumb over Grimaud’s bottom lip, then lunged forward to lick it clean. He groaned as his tongue met Grimaud’s, the Frenchman joining him to taste his own essence, and that dual act of depravity proved his undoing. The mercenary’s relentless pace upon his prick, the intense angle of their union, the very depths he’d plumbed to walk one minute longer through this fire: with a helpless moan, Arthur broke, spending in what seemed an endless floodtide of startling, suffocating pleasure.

The force of his release drained him and he sagged back to the ground, arching his head back as he rode out the successive waves of ecstasy. He was drowning and burning simultaneously, brushing against death and discovering that death was impossibly sweet. Everything was annihilated: kingship and kingdom, time and sense of self. All that continued to exist was his body, torn blissfully from his control, and the man who had brought him to such heights, in whose warm forbidden grasp his prick still pulsed.

Grimaud, however, could stave off his own release no longer. Bracing himself over Arthur with a hand on either side of his head, the Frenchman snarled a breathless curse in his own tongue, his hips jittering as his arms and shoulders stiffened. Warm seed spurted across Arthur’s stomach and chest, and Grimaud collapsed upon him, panting like a winded beast, his open mouth hot against the king’s throat.

“Well, sire,” Grimaud gasped out at length, “are you still the better man? Or are we equals in our corruption?” He squeezed one last time around Arthur’s softening prick and then slid off him, his spent body shifting to lay against the king’s side. A hand slid and stopped along Arthur’s chest, fingers playing idly with the thatch of dark hair they found there. 

Arthur could barely move, let alone speak. The aftershocks of pleasure still echoed in his veins, lulling him to drowsiness despite his thundering heart. The sensation was closest, perhaps, to what he experienced on the battlefield, once he learned that victory had been assured: joy and raw relief, followed immediately by an exhaustion so powerful that he often sank to his knees upon the blood-soaked ground. But in this—what he had just done with the Frenchman, entirely of his own free will—he could find no joy, no relief. As the fog of lust clouding his mind began to lift, Arthur felt as if he had been cleft in two, riven open from stem to stern, and everything inside of him hastily removed and put back in a way that made no sense at all. 

He knew who he was—Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther, King of the Britons—and yet he did not, for he did not recognize the man whose body he occupied, whose limbs lay heavy and intertwined with those of a mercenary villain. How could he reconcile the person he thought he knew with the madness of what he saw arrayed around him? For the proof of their shared sin was unmistakable: bodies profanely covered with a mixture of sweat and blood and seed, their hastily-discarded clothing left in ruins on the ground. 

Grimaud shifted his head along Arthur’s shoulder to gaze up at him, dark brows raised expectantly as if still desiring some answer to his provocation disguised as a question. 

“We are _both_ damned,” Arthur managed to spit out. “But that is what you wanted, is it not?” He stared into those fathomless eyes, dark as a scavenging crow searching for flesh to feed upon. “This is where you draw your true pleasure from: dragging good men into your wickedness so that you are not forced to suffer it alone.”

The corners of Grimaud’s mouth curled up, a mocking half-smile. “You certainly seemed as if you were drawing your fill of pleasure, my lord. So in that case, which one of us is the good man and which one is the wicked?”

Who indeed? Arthur could not deny the accusation: pleasure pounded through him still with the violence of a war horse and he lay crushed beneath the weight of its hooves. Grimaud’s finger strayed over to circle a nipple and, sated and wrung out as he was, Arthur was cognizant of his weakness: the part of his mind that wanted to tear the man’s hand away overpowered by the part that never wanted the Frenchman to stop.

He had been possessed by another version of himself, a sensual being formed of hunger, ravenous and crude. But he would not surrender his life to this being without a fight. No, not a fight: a war. Perhaps it would be the greatest he had ever undertaken to wage. And he was not altogether confident he could win it. But he would try.

“I am a good man,” he said, turning to regard Grimaud, his glance as cold as the resolve he injected into every syllable. “A good man may err, he may fall, but he can be redeemed. The true wickedness lies in the demon that lures him to the edge, who pushes him over.”

Grimaud raised himself on his elbow, the corner of his mouth twitching. “A demon, am I? You accord me such power. I’m honored by it. But I assure you, I did no pushing.” He watched his finger idly wander down Arthur’s stomach, its destination clear. “You may wish to ascribe your fall, as you say, to supernatural powers, but you have only your own broken morality to blame. Though judging by the sounds you were making, perhaps the summoning of infernal powers is the only way you can explain how much I made you spend.”

At long last, rage overcame the lassitude of his limbs, the fathomless hunger of his body. Shoving the Frenchman’s hand away, Arthur sat up and grabbed for his breeches. “I do not know how many kings you encountered before me, Monsieur Grimaud, or how their foibles may have twisted your perceptions, but let me make this clear. I am as fallible as the rest, but among my vices I cannot count the stubbornness that will not admit of a mistake.” He stood, fastening the laces, aware that his hands were shaking, then pulled on his tunic. “I have made a very grave mistake this night indeed, but I can promise you this: it is one that will never be repeated.”

Grimaud had the audacity to smirk. “We shall see about that, sire.” And lying back on Arthur’s fur-lined cloak, he stretched, shameless in the wanton display of his nudity.

“You will remove yourself from my presence,” Arthur growled, “or else—”

“Or else what?” Grimaud propped himself up onto his elbows. “You will have one of your brave knights come and do it for me?”

Arthur stood in stony silence, unwilling to give the Frenchman the satisfaction of responding to such insolence. He wanted nothing more than to see the man depart, for to see him there, posed so brazenly, as if inviting Arthur to lay down and rejoin him once more in carnal embrace—it was more than he could possibly withstand. Having been denied his plaything, at last Grimaud shrugged, all traces of amusement slowly vanishing from his expression. He rose to his feet, searching for his breeches, and tugged them on, even though the severed laces left much exposed, offering Arthur a tantalizing view of those thick, dark curls that trailed up towards his navel. 

He turned his gaze upwards to look the Frenchman in the eye. It was easier now that he was partially clothed, easier for Arthur to harden his will and to make it utterly clear who was the sovereign and who was the liegeman. 

“We will never speak of this,” he said. 

Grimaud pursed his lips, his head tilting as if lost in contemplation. “No, we will not.” He reached down and took Arthur’s cloak into his grasp, brushing his fingertips against the thick fur. For a moment, Arthur thought the mercenary might toss it over his own shoulders—one final act of presumptuous insult—but then he reached out and wrapped it around Arthur, bringing the two halves together as he fastened the clasp at the king’s throat. “But _you_ will think of it,” he murmured. “And you will dream of it. You’ll lie awake at night—all alone, in your bed—remembering what we did together. A drop of mead won’t be able to pass through your lips without recalling how I tasted.” The Frenchman’s voice was like honeyed poison, drawing languidly through Arthur’s veins. He stood close enough that Arthur could feel the heat of his body, radiating from off his bare chest. “You will ache and burn to feel my touch upon you. And one day, sooner than you think, you will find yourself so consumed and mindless with desire that you will finally come to me.” Grimaud paused, dark eyes narrowing to pinpoints. “And I will make you beg for it.”

Arthur lifted his chin, giving the Frenchman a small, icy smile. “Gather your gear and be well away from this encampment by dawn, or I shall see to it that you are taken hence in pieces, carrion for the crows and ravens you so admire.” He turned away, gathering all the dignity he had earned by birth and sword around him like the folds of his cloak, and went back to the chair at the end of the tent where he’d held court. Less than an hour had passed since his knights had been gathered there, celebrating their victory, but the world itself seemed to have changed, shifting on its foundations beneath Arthur’s feet. “You may be sure a great many of my knights would relish that task.”

Grimaud had picked up the remainder of his garments, but he made no move to dress. Instead he remained half-naked and as insolent as ever, standing a few feet from where Arthur sat. “I have no doubt of it. They are not foolish men, as their kind go: they see already how I have usurped them all. No, sire: what I doubt is your resolve.” He bowed then, the movement mocking in its depth and the exaggerated flourish of one hand. “Goodnight, my lord. I shall leave you to your thoughts and await your next summons most eagerly.”

With a smirk that might have earned him a swift death in the court of a less tolerant ruler, Grimaud turned and left the tent. Silence, broken only by the guttering of torches and braziers and the snap of the walls in a rising wind, descended heavy about Arthur’s shoulders. He drew a deep breath and relaxed his fingers, realizing he had curled them into fists as the Frenchman spoke. There had been no point in responding to the rest of Grimaud’s taunts: to do so would only have prolonged a game he had no intention of playing.

He had allowed Grimaud to walk away unscathed, his impertinence intact, and despite all the Frenchman’s provocations, he would allow him to live. Even if dawn found the mercenary still within the encampment, Arthur would command his knights to escort him out but not to harm him. He would be merciful, as behooved a good king. A good man.

And if Grimaud left before dawn…

Arthur fell to his knees in front of the chair, clasping his hands together and pressing them to his lips. Prayer had always been a comfort to him in times of need, but at that moment he could not find the words. When he sought to beg for control over his body, he only became more conscious of the sticky residue clinging to his skin; when he fumbled around in his mind for a scintilla of God’s light, he found only images of the Frenchman’s naked beauty imprinted on his memory.

By his own command Grimaud would be sent away, and the pleasures he had known that night would be nothing more than a memory, fading with the seasons while newly-awakened hunger devoured him slowly from within.

Damnation, Arthur realized, came in many forms.

**Author's Note:**

> onstraysod says:
> 
> i. lafiametta proposed a joint writing project to occupy us during quarantine, and as I'd been very excited by her earlier Grimarthur pieces, I was eager to give it a try. We took turns writing - anywhere from a couple of paragraphs to half a page or so - and the inspiration just flowed. At first we'd only planned to write it for our own amusement, but as this behemoth grew in both length and naughtiness, we couldn't help but want to share it with our fellow Joplittle fanciers. We hope you enjoy it!
> 
> ii. Any errors in the French phrases are entirely the fault of this author who is presently learning the language and who is a constant disappointment to the Duolingo owl.


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